


Between the Light and Darkness

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Series: Wherein Liz Entertains Various Thoughts about the Problem of Susan [12]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Dreams, Gen, Philosophy, Post-Book: The Last Battle (Narnia), Prompt Fic, Sister-Sister Relationship, Sisters, The Problem of Susan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-28 05:38:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16717459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: "Every world is a bubble," Susan says, "a fragile bubble we build despite the darkness, and tend with mercy, patience, and faith. If everyone who heard the call chased it to the ends of the earth, who would be left to keep the sunlight kindled?"





	Between the Light and Darkness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlexSeanchai (EllieMurasaki)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/gifts).



> Written 10/29/18 for [alexseanchai](https://alexseanchai.dreamwidth.org), in response to the prompt: _Susan, Lucy, and Chiaroscuro (gen, please)_. It is also a fill for the [Ladies Bingo](https://ladiesbingo.dreamwidth.org/) square _chiaroscuro_.

Susan dreams.

She sits in a sunlit forest clearing, laying picnic foods on a rough cloth of undyed wool: biscuits and pastries, apples and cherries and grapes, warm bread with a golden crust and soft cheese to spread upon it, cold chicken and sausage and sharp pickles still dripping brine. She can tell by the scent of the bread and the designs stamped into the pastries precisely which of the Cair Paravel bakers had made them, and the spicing on the chicken speaks equally strongly of its cook. She must remember to praise them when she and her siblings return.

At the clearing's edge, Lucy stands looking west into the shadows beneath the trees, shifting from foot to foot as if on the verge of breaking into dance. One of the trees sways in sympathy, a slender twig bending down to comb her golden hair.

"Come and eat," Susan says, patting the cloth beside where she sits.

Lucy turns but keeps her distance. "Can't you hear it?"

"Hear what?" Susan almost says, but the strange, shivering call echoes through the woods once more before the words can leave her lips. "Yes, and I wish I didn't," she says instead. "It's not for us. Our journeys through the dark woods are over and done, and it's time for us to garden and build in the light instead of struggling at swordspoint in the shadows. Come and eat."

She pats the cloth again, adjusts her skirts. One of her nylons has a snag, she notices; she'll have to seal it with clear polish before it grows into a run. Stockings are far too expensive still to waste.

"If you can hear it, why won't you follow?" Lucy says, hands clenched in the pleated fabric of her school's uniform skirt. "How can you stay here in this little bubble when the wider world stretches beyond as far as the soul can imagine?"

"Because every world is a bubble," Susan says, "a fragile bubble we build despite the darkness, and tend with mercy, patience, and faith. If everyone who heard the call chased it to the ends of the earth, who would be left to keep the sunlight kindled? We followed the call. We were bright sparks in the deep of the night. Now our task is to tend the hearth so that others may venture beyond. Lucy. Come and eat."

But Lucy is caught half in shadow, face turned toward subtle movement beneath the trees, one hand outstretched as if to welcome an old friend. "Aslan!" she calls in greeting, and in a queasy blur of time and geometry is suddenly mounted on the Lion's back, legs clamped around his golden sides and one hand wrapped deep within his mane. An ecstatic smile lights her mouth and eyes, so wide and bright it seems her face is merely a lampshade over some wild, leaping bonfire within, and which twists into mania at the slightest shift of leaves that cast their dappled shadows on her shoulders.

"Susan! Come with us!" Lucy calls, leaning back and stretching her free hand toward Susan, the straining, urgent planes of her face limned stark with white-gold sun and green-black shadow as Aslan's hindquarters tense, in the endless, fleeting moment before he leaps.

"No, Lucy! Don't let him take you! Stay!" Susan cries, lunging forward. If she can only catch her sister's hand--

But the light is too strong, the shadows too deep, and she misjudges the distance. Their fingers brush like kittens' whiskers, and then Lucy is gone, leaving nothing but the afterimage of her bare arms and cheek flashing pale before the darkness swallows her whole.

Like a painting by Caravaggio, Susan thinks, gold lamplight and drowning, soot-drenched shadows, all the ugliness of pain and desperation transmuted to beauty sharp enough to sear the soul. What would its title be, if it hung in the Louvre or the portrait gallery at Cair Paravel? _The Parting of the Queens? Pomona and the Maenad?_

The incongruity of the thought startles her from sleep, and she blinks at the pale, blue-gray light filtering through her curtains. A winter morning in England, not quite dawn. Lucy has been dead for six months, gone into the shadowy country from which none may ever return.

"It wasn't meant for you," Susan whispers into the empty silence of her tiny London flat. "There's more than one way to light a torch. But you always had to ride to the wars."

There's no point in trying to return to sleep, not with the sun so nearly risen and her heart pounding as if she had tried to race Aslan in body as well as spirit. So Susan pushes back her covers, swings herself upright, and prepares to face the day.

She has a bubble of light to preserve against the darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet happened because I am not a good enough artist to paint the relevant picture. But while a picture may be worth a thousand words when it comes to showing the details of a scene and invoking an emotional response, words can also do a lot that a single image can't. And given that I literally woke up from a dream with the opening line and the description of Lucy's smile in my head, well... I can recognize a sign when it's shoved in my face. *wry*
> 
> (For the curious, a [rough sketch](https://edenfalling.tumblr.com/post/182086584180/another-bit-of-paper-file-decluttering-a-rough) of the picture I am not remotely a good enough artist to paint.)


End file.
